Market adoption of wireless LAN (WLAN) technology has exploded, as users from a wide range of backgrounds and vertical industries have brought this technology into their homes, offices, and increasingly into the public air space. This inflection point has highlighted not only the limitations of earlier-generation systems, but also the changing role that WLAN technology now plays in people's work and lifestyles across the globe. Indeed, WLANs are rapidly changing from convenience networks to business-critical networks. Increasingly users are depending on WLANs to improve the timeliness and productivity of their communications and applications, and in doing so, require greater visibility, security, management, and performance from their network.
Managing mesh access points can be particularly challenging due to the remote distribution of the mesh access points. It is typically very costly to debug problems associated with a given mesh access point if it becomes isolated from a given network, especially if the problems may have occurred on the mesh access point and an administrator needs to travel physically to the remote site to troubleshoot the problems. Typically, if a mesh access point that experiences problems is identified and located, the administrator may use a serial interface or other alternate interface at the mesh access point to troubleshoot the problems if the administrator has physical access to the device.